- NATO picks Swedish Saab early-warning planes over US rival
Source: Reuters
“NATO announced a roughly $4.5 billion plan on Tuesday to buy up to 10 Saab GlobalEye surveillance planes to replace ageing AWACS early warning aircraft, backing a Swedish system over a rival solution from U.S. planemaker Boeing. Secretary-General Mark Rutte said the replacement of Cold War-era Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes, best known for their rotating radomes, with a new system based on smaller business jets would tackle threats like drone swarms. … With U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly pressing allies to spend more on defence and buy more U.S. equipment, Rutte took pains to underline the international pedigree of the system which is mounted on top of Bombardier Global 6500 business jets. … GlobalEye competes with Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail, an early warning and command-and-control aircraft based on the 737 jetliner and designed to oversee and direct battle.” (07/07/26)
- Poll: US support for Israel slips as Democrats grow more critical
Source: Seattle Times
“After decades of reliable bipartisan backing for Israel, a new AP-NORC poll reveals a dramatic erosion of support for the longtime U.S. ally, with rising opposition from Democrats and signs of division among Republicans. The survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research arrives at a moment when a once-consensus foreign policy issue is increasingly polarizing Americans along partisan and generational lines, driven by criticism for Israel’s conduct nearly three years after the outbreak of its latest war with Hamas in Gaza. About one-third of U.S. adults — including roughly half of Democrats — believe that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians during the war in Gaza …. About 58% of Democrats now say the U.S. is ‘too supportive’ of the Israelis, up from 45% in an AP-NORC poll from January 2024 when former President Joe Biden was in office. That includes 51% of Jewish Democrats in the new poll.” (07/07/26)
- Ukraine: Woman Suspected in Monaco Bombing Found Shot Dead, Report Says
Source: US News & World Report
“The body of a Ukrainian woman suspected of carrying out a bomb attack that targeted a wealthy Ukrainian-born businessman in Monaco last week was found near Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, Ukrainska Pravda reported on Tuesday. Citing sources in law enforcement, the Ukrainian news outlet said the woman had been shot and her body was found close to 11 p.m. local time (2000 GMT) on Monday. Anastasiia Berezovska, 39, was named as the chief suspect in an Interpol Red Notice, which said she was Ukrainian, spoke German and was wanted by authorities in Monaco for attempted murder, placing an explosive device in a public place with criminal intent, and criminal conspiracy. … Ukrainian-born Vadym Yermolaiev, his partner and son were wounded in the attack on Monday last week, sources said.” (07/07/26)
- Teen snags Wilt Chamberlain’s LA Lakers jacket at Goodwill for $4. He could make $335k
Source: CBC News [Canadian state media]
“When Quinn Brown, 19, first laid eyes on basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain’s 1972 Los Angeles Lakers warmup jacket, it was in somebody else’s hands. The Portland, Ore., teen was picking through bins of new arrivals at a local Goodwill store in January when he saw another shopper pick up a massive, bright yellow jacket with Chamberlain’s name etched on the back. The shopper eyed it indecisively, then tossed it back. Brown snatched it up. As an avid thrifter, he says he knew right away it was a good find. He bought it for $3.07 US ($4.36 Cdn), figuring he could sell it online for a couple hundred bucks. Now it’s on the auction block at Sotheby’s, where it’s expected to fetch as much as $250,000 US ($355,150 Cdn). … it wasn’t until he started looking up photos online that he began to suspect it might actually have been worn by Chamberlain himself.” (07/07/26)
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/wilt-chamberlain-jacket-goodwill-9.7260381?cmp=rss
- Syria: Explosions rock Damascus during Macron’s visit
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“At least two explosive devices have gone off in the Syrian capital, Damascus, as French President Emmanuel Macron visits the country. Syria’s Interior Ministry said at least 18 people, including four police officers, were wounded in the blasts, the state news agency SANA reported on Tuesday. Television footage showed plumes of smoke rising over the city and other footage shared online and verified by Al Jazeera showed a vehicle on fire. An Al Jazeera correspondent said that the blasts occurred near the Ministry of Tourism and a hotel where Macron was meant to be staying during a visit to the capital for talks with his Syrian counterpart, Ahmed al-Sharaa.” (07/07/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/7/explosions-heard-in-syrias-damascus
- Mitch McConnell’s daughter deletes her X account as questions swirl over health after his hospitalization
Source: Independent [UK]
“The daughter of Senator Mitch McConnell has deleted her X account amid widespread speculation over the former Senate majority leader’s health, following a sudden June hospitalization. It is unclear when or why Porter McConnell, a progressive-leaning political activist who previously directed the Take On Wall Street campaign, deleted her account. … McConnell was found unconscious on June 14 and received CPR after suffering an apparent heart attack in his Washington, D.C., home, according to emergency records obtained by a variety of news outlets. Little else is known about his current condition.” (07/06/26)
- Belgium: Regime eyes Palestinian recognition after Hamas steps back from Gaza governance
Source: Politico
“Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot said Monday that he has instructed his Cabinet to move toward a decision on recognizing Palestinian statehood. The move comes after the militant group Hamas announced earlier in the day that it would dissolve the body that has governed Gaza for the best part of 20 years. Hamas stepping away from power is one of Prévot’s prerequisites for Belgian recognition of Palestine.” (07/06/26)
- The Plot to Ruin America
Source: CounterPunch
by Nick Estes“Nothing encapsulates the decline of the American project quite like the optics of its 250th anniversary. While four hundred masked neo-fascists marched through the capitol in navy-blue button-downs and khakis chanting ‘Reclaim America!’—entirely unchallenged either by police or antifascists—the official Independence Day parade was canceled because of extreme heat. It’s a disturbing vignette for our era. The country is turning far to the right and becoming too hot to even celebrate its own founding myths, reaching temperatures that climate scientists said would have been ‘virtually impossible’ before human-caused climate change. So who’s to blame for this current mess? Predictably, the political class has no interest in examining the structural decay.” (07/07/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/07/07/the-plot-to-ruin-america/
- America: Land of the cheats
Source: UnHerd
by B Duncan Moench“‘Ball don’t lie.’ This phrase, originally attributed to NBA star Rasheed Wallace, comes from American basketball culture and implies that, no matter what the referees or back-office bureaucrats do to intervene in the game, the ball will end up where it should. If it goes through the net, the sporting gods wanted it to happen. The best team wins. Always. … Yes, Donald Trump may have personally intervened with Fifa to get Folarin Balogun, America’s star striker, an exception on the red card he’d earned in the previous match. But having Daddy Warbucks pull strings for your side can take an athletic effort only so far: in the end, Belgium won the game 4-1.” (07/07/26)
- European Rearmament Is a Trap
Source: The American Conservative
by Luke Nicastro“[T]he plain truth is that the U.S. military presence is not necessary to keep the Cossacks from waltzing into Warsaw, let alone Berlin or Paris. This would be the case even in the absence of the current rearmament push, and even if Russia had demonstrable designs on European territory beyond Ukraine. The non-U.S. members of NATO have a collective GDP that is over 10 times that of Russia. There are over 600 million Europeans to about 140 million Russians. Although its militaries are short on what the heads call ‘strategic enablers,’ there is little doubt that they would make a conventional conflict with Russia so painful as to deter its commencement. And indeed, when it comes to Russia, America’s aim should be to avoid conflict—not provoke it.” (07/07/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/european-rearmament-is-a-trap/
- Iraq PM embraces his inner Michael Corleone — for the best of reasons
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Tanya Goudsouzian & Ibrahim Al-Marashi“Ali Al Zaidi has launched an unprecedented but much needed crackdown on figures tied to the country’s massively corrupt patronage system.” (07/07/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ali-zaidi-iraq-corruption/
- Technology shocks and boom bust cycles
Source: Cobden Centre
by Dr. Frank Shostak“Contrary to KP, an economic boom is not about economic prosperity and wealth generation, but about the diversion of resources from the wealth generating activities towards activities that consume and do not produce wealth i.e. undermine the wealth generating process. Or we could say that an economic boom gives rise to activities that are engaged in consumption, which is unbacked by the previous production of wealth i.e. non-productive consumption. If for some reason the diversion of resources is arrested, various non-productive activities that sprang up as a result of this diversion come under pressure i.e. an economic bust emerges.” (07/07/26)
https://www.cobdencentre.org/2026/07/technology-shocks-and-boom-bust-cycles/
- America Was Not Founded by “Tariff Men,” Contrary to This Painting in Trump’s White House
Source: Independent Institute
by Phillip W Magness“The significance of trade to the Revolution’s origins helps to resolve a long-observed paradox about the colonists’ motives. Despite the Revolution’s reputation as a tax revolt, Americans paid relatively low tax rates compared to people in England proper. The total sum was ‘paltry,’ and most of Parliament’s new revenue measures were ‘moderate and often short-lived,’ to quote economist Deirdre Nansen Mccloskey. They nonetheless sparked a political upheaval against the assertion of a novel and foreign authority. The issue was not the tax rate; it was the fact that Parliament could claim a tax power over trade, and thus over all else.” (07/06/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/07/06/america-founded-tariff-men/
- Progressive Asceticism Will Never Win Elections
Source: Persuasion
by Harry Cheadle“Alicia Kennedy, one of the most celebrated food writers of her generation, sometimes seems to approach food as a series of moral dilemmas waiting to be untangled. In her new memoir, On Eating—a useful starting point to consider progressive culture as a whole—she writes that alcohol ‘is one of the most wasteful things one can consume, producing twelve times the wastewater for the amount of spirit created.’ Climate change may make wheat scarce, she worries. Sugar, meanwhile, conjures up a litany of horrors—it was originally harvested by slaves, and the present-day sugar industry is often accused of mistreating workers. … For at least a decade, left-of-center, educated, middle-class-and-above Westerners have become inflamed with guilt for the way we live. In a roundabout way, the left has reinvented the idea of sin.” (07/06/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/progressives-have-reinvented-sin
- Hazelwood is the training-wheels version of free speech. It’s past time the Court revisited it.
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Marie McMullan“For nearly four decades, students in America’s public schools have experienced a straightjacketed version of the First Amendment. That’s due to the Supreme Court’s Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision. School administrators — who are government officials — have used Hazelwood to censor student expression, often prioritizing the school’s reputation over student voices. These administrators mark certain stories and topics as off-limits, including critiques of school boards or commentary on federal immigration policy. … Justice Samuel Alito’s recent dissent calling the Court to reconsider Hazelwood should be echoed, not dismissed.” (07/06/26)
- Shipping Thrived After Trump Waived the Jones Act
Source: Reason
by Joe Lancaster“When the U.S. launched a war against Iran in February, it sent the prices of goods like fuel and fertilizer skyrocketing. Hoping to remediate the damage, President Donald Trump issued a waiver of Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. Better known as the Jones Act, the statute says cargo moving between American ports must be carried on a ship that was built in America, with predominantly American owners and crew. … Since the waiver has been in effect, America’s shipping lanes have thrived—providing further evidence that we should scrap the Jones Act altogether.” (07/06/26)
https://reason.com/2026/07/06/shipping-thrived-after-trump-waived-the-jones-act/
- Air Conditioners — Threat or Menace?
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob“Is it selfish, asks Good Morning Britain, to want air conditioning? Yes, it’s selfish to want to live and prosper and be comfortable in 90 degree heat. And this ‘selfish’ cooling is bad because … ? According to ‘the experts’ queried by the Good Morning Britain presenters — which broadcasts using ‘non-green’ energy — it’s bad because ‘we know’ that the cooling of indoor air will heat up the outdoors — and therefore the planet. Catastrophically, of course. But we don’t know. It’s one of many unproven assertions about the future of weather that get tossed around to make us feel guilty about not wanting to live in caves and eat dandelions.” (07/06/26)
- Law & Liberty Podcast, 07/07/26
Source: Law & Liberty
“The Harmony of the American Founding with Hans Eicholz, hosted by James M. Patterson.” (07/07/26)
https://lawliberty.org/podcast/the-intellectual-harmony-of-the-american-founding/
- Cato Podcast, 07/07/26
Source: Cato Institute
“Data Centers Turn Electricity into Breakthroughs.” (07/07/26)
https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-podcast/data-centers-turn-electricity-breakthroughs
- The Bryan Hyde Show, 07/07/26
Source: The Bryan Hyde Show
“It’s my weekly check-in with Eric Peters from Eric Peters Autos. We talk about the growing threat of flock cameras and whether we have a duty to participate in our own enslavement.” (07/07/26)
- The Kyle Anzalone Show, 07/06/26
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Jim Webb: Commies or Trump? Who Is a Threat to the American Dream.” (07/06/26)
- The Vital Center, 07/06/26
Source: Niskanen Center
“Can Democrats win back the working class, with Joan Williams.” (07/06/26)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/can-democrats-win-back-the-working-class-with-joan-williams/
- Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 07/06/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Trump Threatens Attacks on Iran If No Deal, Israeli Drone Strike Kills Four in Lebanon, and More.” (07/05/26)